'He's evil Betty, he's evil.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘We yearn for you, we lust for you, father of darkness.’
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We’re looking at Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell,
'What's the matter with you.'
a 1970s TV movie that opens with Hammer horror’s Martine Beswick treading carefully around what you can say on TV.
‘We want a female dog, your very best.’
The breeder has just the bitch,
‘This is Lady’
She likes Spaghetti and meatballs.
‘She’s the one’
and the dog is soon settling in to her new home.
'And now your time has come again,'
#nonsence pig latin#
Elsewhere, the Barry family are looking for a new dog and, as luck would have it, the child catcher is making his rounds.
‘Hiya kids, do you think your Mom would like some nice fresh corn’
I got corn, melons, apples, possessed puppies, ‘
'I gotta find homes for these little pups before sundown’
What the hell happens at sundown?
'Oooh I think that little fella has already picked you out sweetheart.'
Should they buy a puppy from the creepy door-to-door dog salesman?
‘I guess it’s ok’
‘Gooood.’
Now I won’t have to kill them.
‘I’m gonna name him Lucky’
Lucky gets on with the family, but not the help.
One thing you learn from the history of horror movies is that ethic servants are always the first to know,
'Senior Barry, it's the new dog,'
'What about him.'
'It's like a chill, he gives me a scary feeling all over.'
it seldom works out well for them.
A year later, Lucky is all grown up and controlling the children.
'What are you doing sneaking around in here.'
‘It looks like blood’
‘Leave my things alone’
"Stop touching my jar of blood, Mom!"
Mother, Betty, is suspicious.
‘It’s the children’
They’ve started worshipping Satan.
So Lucky turns his attention on her, and...
'Betty?'
And gives her makeover.
‘Michael’
Wow, the dog really improved my wife.
'Come on in Mike.'
Lucky likes to watch.
But despite sex in the neighbour’s pool, Mike remains suspicious,
quite reasonably.
Anyone who gets in the way of Lucky’s plan goes the way of Maria the maid;
the neighbour’s dog.
‘He’s ripped to pieces’,
the neighbour himself.
But this does raise the question; what is Lucky’s plan?
Son, Charlie is running for class president.
‘What do you think your chances are?’
‘100% percent’
I’m going to get your son elected to school council, even if I have to take out the opposition to do it.
‘Day of the election, Bobby Atherton was found with a stolen watch in his locker’
and when a teacher takes an interest.
‘You tried to seduce him?’
'It just so happens I care about Charle's future.'
Man, this dog will stop at nothing to get its paws on the unlimited power afforded to a high school class president.
Killing the teacher,
And winning the Killer Shrews award for achievements in Canine hairdressing.
Now, on the one hand I do quite like the small, personal level of the stakes,
and there were lots of puppies in the child catcher’s truck,
implying that this sort of low level evil is being spread elsewhere, in fact.
‘The dog next door that forced him to kill all those people’
You see, that dog is trying.
Lucky is an underachieving demon dog.
‘I thought this was your day at the Veterans’ Hospital’
‘What those art classes? Not any more’
Today the class presidency, tomorrow, no more art classes for veterans.
‘Dad, what are you doing?’
'I'm sorry Charlie, but he has to go.'
We learn that Lucky can’t be killed
Or that Mike is a really bad shot.'
and that he is something called Bargest,
‘It’s a demon who appears in the form of a dog’
resurrected once every thousand years… to steal school elections and limit veteran’s access to art.
‘There must be some design’
Yeah, I thought that, but there doesn’t seem to be.
Which is a shame because the concept doesn’t have to be silly.
‘A goblin dog’
The dog is something we trust, something we let into our home,
an enemy within is always creepy, and there are some good ideas,
like the mirror revealing the soul of the dog’s adherents.
But it does have the symptoms of one of those movies where someone said,
just slap on an ending, anything will do,
so Mike takes a trip to Ecuador,
'Mr Barry.'
where, purely by chance, his cab driver’s great grandfather is a shaman,
who tattoos Mike’s hand.
‘He steals the souls of those we love’
yeah, fine. just pay attention to what you’re doing,
so he can send the bargest back to hell.
Job done.
‘It’s over forever, isn’t it’
But hang on.
‘Well there were ten pups in that litter, where do you suppose the other 9 are?’
Well, that’s not our problem, son.
It’s creepy I guess, it’s fine I guess, it’s always good to see Martine Beswick.
‘One thousand years since you were chained in the bowels of hell and banished from the earth.’
And it is better than Zoltan, hound of Dracula, which we reviewed many full moons ago,
to which this could have been a sequel.
But when you come right down to it the plot is..
‘My dog. He’s taken over my wife and my children and somehow he kills anyone who tries to stop him.’
Yeah.
'That bad huh?'
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What are the most pathetic evil plans in cinema, the bad guys who are just phoning it in? Let us know in the comments below.
'Please, I don't want to talk about it anymore.'